


There's More Room In A Broken Heart (the I Know Nothing Stays The Same remix)

by AndreaLyn



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22429738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: Michael's facing three issues when it comes to building his ship -- the engine, the flight path, and his loneliness now that he's facing the universe alone.He decides to cope with the last problem first, even if his mechanisms aren't the healthiest imaginable.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 40
Kudos: 79
Collections: RNM Fanfic Remix 2020





	There's More Room In A Broken Heart (the I Know Nothing Stays The Same remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aewriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aewriting/gifts).
  * Inspired by [I Know Nothing Stays the Same](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043424) by [aewriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aewriting/pseuds/aewriting). 



> This remix is of the incredible, heartbreaking, wonderful [I Know Nothing Stays The Same](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043424/chapters/47463793), which I think about daily. 
> 
> There is angst ahead, but I hope it's enjoyed! 
> 
> This story picks up from the end of the aforementioned one.

There are three main issues that Michael is facing when it comes to his ship. 

The first is the engine – it works, but not as efficiently as it should. It’ll fly, but not far.

The second is the flight path – he knows the destination, but not the best route. 

The third is the loneliness. 

He decides to tackle the last one first. It seems like the hardest and the easiest, all at the same time.

***

It’s been months since he lost Alex, but every day feels like it happened yesterday. 

Logically, he’d known it would happen. Alex is a human (was), and doesn’t age the way the aliens did (didn’t), which means that even after healing from the heart attack, he could only live for so long (…lived).

Grief is doing awful things to Michael, but he thinks the worst of the symptoms is the loneliness. 

The bed is empty. He sits at the table and eats meals alone. His family turns up for visits, but they inevitably leave, and the silence creeps in again like an unwanted friend coming around to call. He goes to sleep, wakes up, and endures another lonely day without Alex. 

One morning, he wakes up and the loneliness is still eating away at him, but that’s when he decides that enough is enough. 

That’s the day he begins working on the ship again, digging out his old research and inviting Stella over for the both of them to remember where they left off. She stares at old notes with the reverence of someone seeing an old friend for the first time in years, tapping her own writing, and remarking that she remembers that equation, how she never thought she’d get it. 

When she leaves that day, Michael has his list of issues to solve.

Engine, flight path, and later, he adds the loneliness. 

That ghostly, ghastly companion that refuses to leave. There’s something in his workshop that can combat it, though. It’s probably a terrible idea, but Michael hasn’t been thinking properly since he lost Alex. 

He’d found the technology in one of the test runs through the ship’s equipment two decades back. Holographic technology that their people used for maps, which had been adapted to make artificial intelligence more humanoid. 

Today, he looks at it, and he thinks, _why not_. 

It takes him several DNA samples, tons of Alex’s coding from when he’d been alive, and uploading every single video he’s ever taken of Alex into the mainframe of the ship. 

This is a mistake, Michael tells himself.

It’s an awful idea, he shouldn’t be doing this, it’s…

“Hey, Michael,” says a holographic image of the man he loves more than anything in the universe.

It strikes him like a lance to the heart, bringing with it an unexpected burst of grief.

Michael turns it off immediately, crumpling in the corner. He sobs until he thinks he can’t breathe. How could he be so stupid? He shouldn’t have done that. For seconds, he’d had Alex back. _His_ Alex, at 37, wearing a smile he hasn’t seen since they moved into their first house.

It’s Alex, but it’s not. 

When he can breathe again, his fingers hover over the program he’s created. The delete button is there, and he knows he should press it. 

He doesn’t.

He also doesn’t initiate the program again. Instead, he goes back to the first problem and pursues the engine to start making the modifications he needs so that it’ll fly through galaxies without fail. The whole time he does, the initiate button to boot up the AI lingers in his peripheral vision, like it’s mocking him. 

He still needs to solve the engine issue and the flight plan. There are so many minute tasks that need to be accomplished beyond that, but Michael’s barely paying them any mind in the face of those two daunting ones.

Yet, every time he enters the lab, his attention doesn’t go to those problems.

His gaze is fixed fully on the button that starts up the holographic program.

It takes three days, but he inevitably gives in. 

“Seventy hours,” says the hologram. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to make me think it’s like the old days, when we were apart.”

He’s not real. Michael knows that because he’s created him, but fuck, if it isn’t convincing.

For a moment, Michael stares and catalogues his work. The flop of Alex’s hair on his forehead looks the way it does when he first wakes in the morning and hasn’t had time to fix it. The wrinkles are there, from the crow’s feet around his eyes to the small laughter lines around his mouth that tell a story of a man who learned how to enjoy his life. His eyes look vibrant and full of life, and he’s staring at Michael like he loves him.

He’s so real.

“I missed you so much,” Michael blurts out before he can stop himself.

It feels safe. This isn’t a real person, so it’s safe to confess how raw and exposed he’s feeling. This version of Alex can’t tuck Michael’s head under his chin and hold him close. There’s no real warmth to him, no body heat, and no humanity – not in the ways that matter.

The hologram focuses, as though it’s mining data. “Because Alexander Manes died approximately three thousand and forty-eight hours…”

“Stop.” Michael closes his eyes at the reminder. He’s not sure he can face that truth. He digs out the console to add a new line of code that will prevent the program from referencing to Alex’s death.

It feels cowardly, but necessary.

The program regards him and this time, he smiles so softly and sweetly that it’s like he has Alex back. It’s real _enough_. “I’ve missed you too, Michael,” it says, now that Michael has shaved off some of the more discordant notes of programming. 

He still feels perilously close to crying, but it’s better than nothing. 

Michael has a ship to work on. He has a seemingly infinitely long list of issues that he needs to solve for, and he intends to get to them. The loneliness is what he wanted to fix, so he narrows his focus on something that the program will know based on old journals he’s uploaded and as much information as he could collect through private data sources and Alex’s logs. 

“Tell me about our first apartment.”

“Austin?”

Michael nods, not trusting himself to speak. It feels like a lifetime ago when Alex had been the one who couldn’t talk, and it hits him like a blunt force in his gut when he understands that it genuinely was.

Whatever alien DNA runs through his veins, he’s had more time than he thinks he deserves, and he’s still staring down the stretch of uncertainty about how much more he’ll get. 

“Even though we had money for the first time, you made us consider that discount bed…”

Michael closes his eyes to let Alex’s voice wash over him. When he’s not looking, like this, he can pretend that this is actually Alex. He hears the lilt of amusement in his tone, just like Alex would’ve had, and he can hear the way he goes sarcastic and wry. Michael knows that the program is only as good as his coding and their records, but it’s more than good enough.

When he gets ready to leave the lab for the night, his hand hovers over the power button for the console.

It’s where he’s tied the power source for the Alex hologram.

“Michael?”

He looks over to see Alex standing there, staring at him with a confused look. “If I press that button, you go away. I know it’s just a program, but it’ll feel like I’m killing you, somehow.” Now that he’s made his adjustments and come to grips with what he’s done, he’s not sure that he could take that step.

“You know that I’m not a person.”

The trapped sound in his throat feels like aching grief, but Michael nods.

“You have two generators powering the lab,” he says next, instead of encouraging Michael to turn him off. “Even if you decide to keep me going, it won’t cause a dramatic drain of power. I can put myself into a low power mode to conserve energy.”

“Sleep,” Michael interprets. “You can sleep.”

He can’t do that with Michael. Michael can’t wrap him up in his arms and hold onto him possessively tight, as if he can prevent him from leaving him again. It’s so tempting to drag a mattress here where he can at least lie and look at Alex, but that feels like taking a step down a very dangerous road.

“I’ll sleep,” Alex says, “if you will.”

His heart seizes at the request. It sounds like Alex, and even the concern looks like Alex’s did, from the softness of his eyes to the way his lips turn down slightly. It leaves Michael exposed, as if his heart is on the line. Never mind that he’s the one who programmed Alex to be this way, it’s suddenly too much and Michael slams a mask into place, as if he needs to defend his heart from his own partner.

No. That’s not Alex.

He thinks this’ll be the hardest lesson to learn.

“You sleep, and so will I,” he makes the deal, his voice heavy with emotion. 

“Goodnight Michael.”

Michael doesn’t say anything back. He turns off the lights in the workshop and climbs the stairs, ignoring the way he can see light flickering in the corner of his eye – proof that even though Alex has made him a promise, he’s waiting to see if Michael will keep up his end of the bargain first.

It’s so _human_. 

Somehow, that serves as the reminder that what Alex is right now _isn’t_. 

***

“I don’t understand.” 

Michael hates the despondent edge in Stella’s voice. “I’m working through a few calculations on my own. I’m not cutting you out.”

Alex looks at him from where he’s standing, arms crossed over his chest, _disapproving_. 

Michael breathes in sharply, hating that he’s doing this to his family. 

“I promise, I’m not finishing this one without you.”

“It feels like you are.”

It aches to hear Stella’s hurt, but Michael knows there’s no way she can come into the workshop. She’ll see what he’s done with the holographic technology. She’ll see Alex. Michael knows that his hiding it is the most damning evidence that what he’s doing is wrong, but he still can’t bring himself to stop.

“Soon, kiddo,” he promises. “I’ll bring you back in soon. You keep on enjoying that life of yours.”

Stella says, “okay,” but it’s clear from her tone that she doesn’t understand why Michael’s cutting her out of the final steps of their project. He knows that he could have brought her here to solve his loneliness, but it feels too much like letting his open wounds be on display.

It’s easier when it’s something that Michael can turn off (not that he has, not since that first time). 

“You lied to her.”

“Of course I lied to her,” is Michael’s instantly fierce hiss of reply. He rubs his face with his hands, not sure he can justify it to her, even if he’s allowed himself these excuses. “She’d be upset if she saw what I did.”

“Me.”

“Yeah, you,” Michael lets out a rough scoff. “She’d call Isobel, make me go see someone to get help. She’d yell at me about unhealthy coping mechanisms. They both would.”

She’d destroy the programming.

That’s what he fears the most. It’s not that Stella will see how badly Michael is coping without Alex. It’s that she’ll take the one thing he’s created to give him some peace of mind and take it away. He’s not ready for that, even though deep down he knows it will have to happen someday. 

It can’t be today. It can’t be yet. He’s not ready to lose Alex again.

“She loves you, Michael.”

“I know,” he agrees, his voice breaking at the reminder. Alex loved him, once. It hadn’t been enough to prevent the ravages of age from taking him away. Michael’s a Nobel Prize winning genius, but he couldn’t stop time from taking its toll on the man he loves. 

Instead, he’d resurrected him with technology and memory, trying to hide him in his lab from his family and friends, like a modern-day Frankenstein trying to prevent them from finding his monster. In Michael’s case, he’s fairly sure the only monstrous thing in the immediate vicinity is the ugly twisted grief that’s warping his decisions and his sense. 

“Run me through the status again,” he orders Alex, because he wants to be working on the engine and not thinking about how Stella can’t find out what he’s done.

None of them can know what he’s done.

Alex _sighs_ , long and heavy. Michael gives him a warning look, though it’s an empty threat. He’s not about to turn off the programming and he’s sure that Alex knows it as well. He’s safe from Michael’s wrath.

Still, he does as he’s asked and begins to rattle off the latest results from the stress test.

It gives Michael something to focus on, so he doesn’t have to think about the way he’d seen Stella’s face drop during their last call. He doesn’t mean to cause her this kind of grief, but he also knows that it would be worse for him to turn Alex off.

When their testing is done for the day, Michael lingers at the door. 

Alex is behind him, watching expectantly.

“You’ll sleep?” Michael asks hesitantly, casting a glance over his shoulder.

“Yes.” Alex steps towards him. The lights are already off in the bunker, but the moonlight from outside spills in, dappling Alex’s face. Michael is already a few rungs up on the ladder, so when he looks down, Alex is standing beneath him. “Call your niece. Invite her here to help.”

Michael hangs his head, knowing he owes her an apology.

“She can’t see you,” he protests.

“She won’t,” Alex vows. “I’ll hide in a life support program. Don’t test that, and she won’t find me. She loves you and she wants to help with this. You know that you wouldn’t feel right if you finished this without her.”

Michael lets out a pained sob, because, “How the hell are you still so much smarter than me?”

“Because Alex loves you so much,” he says, “because I do,” he corrects, as if he’s learned the intricacies of human emotion and how much it means for Michael to hear those words coming from Alex’s voice. “Bring her here. Work on the project. I’ll hide, and she won’t find me.”

Michael should feel guilty about hiding Alex like this, but he nods in agreement to the plan.

He goes back to the house and calls Stella. Michael apologizes for earlier, but she says she understands, hesitantly commenting about how grief takes a different toll on everyone. They make plans for her to come over and work on the ship and Michael shares how close he thinks he is to finishing.

It also means he’s close to having to decide what to do about the Alex program, but he ignores that.

His feet are still securely on planet Earth, and that’s something he doesn’t intend to face until he’s ready to take off.

***

Michael comes into the workshop after he’s had a few beers and a _lot_ of acetone. 

He knows it’s a mistake and that he shouldn’t be down here, but it’s better than an empty bed. He stumbles slightly, his fingers take three attempts before they hit the start-up sequence to unearth the program from where he’s hiding, and then there’s Alex.

He grins as the light floods the area and Alex stands there, staring at where Michael’s slumping into a chair.

“You’re inebriated.”

“And you’re not real,” Michael counters. “So we’re all having a day, aren’t we?”

Alex crosses the room to stand in front of Michael. It’s instinct for Michael to reach out and try and take his hand, but it passes through air and coding, finding nothing. His face falls and he buries his face in the crook of his elbow when he needs a moment to process that. He tries to pretend that it’s Alex’s warmth, his neck, his arm, his shoulder, but it’s not.

It’s never going to be again.

“I don’t know how to live without you, Alex.”

“That’s clearly not true.”

“What do you know?” Michael asks, rubbing at the tears falling down his cheeks.

“I know that Alex Manes wrote you a long letter when the end was near. It instructed you to follow the stars to find a new home. It said to lean on your family and friends and remember how much you’re loved.” 

“Yeah, but that’s not with you,” Michael pleads. He’s read the letter a thousand times, but while Alex tried to give him a new purpose, he never gave him the answer on how to live without him. He should know. He spent five years without Alex all those years ago, but having him back had given him a false hope that it would never happen again.

Now look at him. 

“He wanted you to honor his wishes.”

Michael inhales sharply and wants, so desperately, to be allowed to be selfish. He wishes that instead of building a ship, he had focused more on his powers. Maybe he could have unlocked some kind of healing that would reverse the aging damage to Alex’s cells. Maybe he could have repaired his heart and given him better quality of life.

He’s drunk, swimming in acetone, and what-ifs. 

“Michael,” says the Alex voice that he’d given life to, because he’d rather have _some_ form of Alex versus none. “I’m so proud of you for what you’ve done. It was never easy, but you always kept going. I’m so happy for the time we got together.”

He barely turns his face out of his elbow, staring blearily at Alex. 

“I miss you,” he says again, an old plea that shows how weak Michael is, but it’s the truth.

He misses holding him at night. He misses the way Alex would smile at him over breakfast, laughing fondly when Michael makes a terrible joke. He misses how Alex would press up against him while they talked to the family. God, he misses the way Alex would moan his name as he came, and he misses all the things he’s forgotten to even remember.

The good, and even the bad.

It feels strange to miss fighting, stress, and tension, but he does. He misses it all.

“What if I don’t _want_ to live without you?”

The silence that fills the room after that dark confession scares Michael. For a moment, he thinks somehow he’s disabled Alex, but when he looks up, he’s still there. He’s been struck dumb and quiet in shock, gaping at Michael. It’s likely his programming not knowing how to respond, and yet the expression he wears is one of numb shock.

It’s like he can’t believe Michael’s said what he did. 

“Michael,” Alex exhales.

“Delete that…”

“No,” Alex says, cutting him off. “No. Don’t you dare take that away. You can’t make me forget it.”

He could. That’s the whole point. 

Michael stares up at the way the program is pleading with him, and in that moment, it’s not just a program. It’s Alex, begging him to take back what he said, because it hurts him to think that he could do what he’s implying.

The truth is, he’s not sure he could do anything about it. 

Even without Alex here, Michael knows how much it would disappoint him. There’s a whole letter that goes into what Alex wants him to do. 

Anything else would feel like a treasonous attack against his memory.

So he lets it be, lets it exist. His weakness, his grief, and a ghost reminding him that he’s got so much life left in front of him.

***

“Everything’s ready, Michael.”

It is, but Michael stares at the finished ship like he’s lost a loved one. 

With a glance at the Alex hologram, Michael’s breath catches in his chest, but he suppresses it after a stupid moment. He didn’t program the hologram with any sort of physical capabilities, but he did give it emotional intelligence. Michael wants to suppress his grief, but Alex (even in this form) would see it.

“You’ve been delaying your departure for four-point-two days, according to my calculations.”

Michael stares at him and feels like he’s at Alex’s hospital bedside again, scared like the boy he’d been in the shed. “I said something to you once.”

“You said plenty of things to me,” Alex replies. “Which one is keeping you from doing what you’ve been building for decades?”

“I told you that as long as you’re here, on this planet, in this form, that I’m yours.”

The hologram can’t feel, not really, but the sadness on Alex’s face _looks_ convincing as hell. No, not sadness. Sympathy. 

“I’m not Alex.”

“I know,” Michael chokes out, even though he wants him to be.

“In a way, I am yours,” he admits. 

He’s Michael’s creation. He’s coding that Michael inputted into a machine. He belongs to Michael, but not the way Alex did. “You’re not the one I made the promise to,” he admits, feeling hollow. 

If he allows himself, he knows why he’s lingering. When he goes, he’ll have to dismantle the programming. He’ll be saying goodbye to the family he has left, after saying goodbye to the family he’d made. The promise he made to Alex will disintegrate before his eyes. 

“You’ve said goodbye to your family and friends,” Alex reminds him. “You can say goodbye to me.”

Michael already has. That’s the problem he keeps running into.

He’s ready to go, but every time he starts, something stops him.

 _Someone_.

On Earth, he’d fallen in love. He’d had his heart broken. Then, he’d fallen all over again (though he never really fell out) and got a lifetime with a man he loved. The idea of leaving it is something that he’s been working up to, but it’s still the hardest thing that he’s ever had to do. 

If he doesn’t go, then what Alex had wanted for him will never come to pass. 

Michael makes a split-second decision, capitalizing on the way that strikes him with action. “Run the initiation sequence,” he says, before he can change his mind. “It’s time.”

Alex nods and his hologram jumps to the console to begin the ship’s initiation sequence as Michael collects the one small suitcase he intends to bring – most of it mementos and pieces of his life with Alex – before climbing in. He knows that this might not be forever. There are still people here for him, but he has to see what’s out there for him.

There could be more aliens like him. There could be none, but that still leaves a whole universe to explore. 

“T-minus two minutes,” Alex calls his warning, appearing in the ship once Michael’s fully packed. 

He settles into the pilot’s seat, heart racing as his life’s work comes to fruition. He lost his life’s love and this had been all that was left. In a few moments, he won’t even have that. It will be replaced with a journey, though he’s still not sure if it’s equal to what he’s given up.

“Ready for launch, on your command.”

Michael buckles in, staring up at the night sky. Stella’s a genius, and she’d been the one to put the final touches on the start-up sequence, making it as easy as a few clicks of a button. 

One.

Two.

Three, then he’s up in the air.

He's solved the engine issue. He’s managed to find a flight path that makes sense. With a look to the side, where Alex is standing over him like a first mate, he knows that he’s also addressed his loneliness, even if he’s hesitant to call it _solved_.

Put off, he thinks. Ignored. 

He doubts this problem will ever have a solution now that Alex is gone. 

Michael leaves the Earth below and then he's amongst the stars again.

Michael might not remember the first time, but it bears the strangest sensation of coming home. 

This has been something he’s thought of for decades, but now that he’s back amongst the stars, it feels surreal. He doesn’t feel like he belongs here and now he understands why he could never do this when he still had Alex. 

Even now, he feels the pull back to Earth, as if a memory is enough to keep him attached.

He leans forward and opens the console to flick through the various programs he’s installed until he comes to the coding for the Alex hologram. On Earth, he couldn’t even bring himself to power Alex down at the end of the night. 

“Alex,” he says, which brings the program’s attention to him.

“Yes, Michael?”

“Will you watch the stars with me? One last time?”

“Always.”

***

It takes twenty-two keystrokes for him to delete the program.

He's alone with a memory.

He had a lifetime and he’d been selfish enough to demand more. It’s important that in the end, he deletes the traces of the carbon copy he created, knowing that the real thing would want him to. 

He’s alone. He knows how loved he was. That will be enough, because Alex’s love is always enough.

Even if only in his memory, with the stars ahead to remind him of the journey that Alex wanted him to take.


End file.
